7337-Texto Do Artigo-34507-1-10-20170108

Imagery for the
Improvement of Serving in
Beach Volleyball: A Single
Case Study
Alberto Filgueiras
Abstract Imagery is a widely spread technique in sport

psychology. The aim of the present study was to use PETTLEP
and Paivio’s imagery models as an intervention to establish
routine, to improve technique and to boost self-confidence
toward serving of an Elite Beach Volleyball player. A single
case study was conducted with a 25-year-old athlete. The
researcher followed the athlete during serving practice for 4
months, guiding him through imagery exercises. Two open-
ended interviews and six questionnaires were examined by
content analysis. Results suggest that imagery did help the
player. Limitations of this study and recommendations for
imagery use are presented.
KEYWORDS: Imagery, Volleyball, Serving, Performance,

Motivation.
Revista Brasileira de Psicologia do Esporte, São Paulo, v.6, nº- 3, dezembro 2016 057
Imagery for the Improvement of Serving in Beach Volleyball: A Single Case Study
Alberto Filgueiras
Imagética para melhora no saque no

Vôlei de Praia: um estudo de caso
Alberto Filgueiras
Resumo Imagética é uma técnica bem conhecida na Psicologia do Esporte.

O objetivo do presente estudo foi usar os modelos PETTLEP e de Paivio
de imagens mentais como intervenções para estabelecer ritual, melhorar
a técnica e aumentar a auto-confiança em relação ao saque de um atleta
de elite de Vôlei de Praia. Um estudo de caso foi conduzido com um atleta
profissional de 25 anos de idade. O autor acompanhou o atleta por quatro
meses durante seus treinos de saque guiando-o por exercícios de imagens
mentais. Duas entrevistas abertas e seis questionários foram considerados
através do método de Análise de Conteúdo. Os resultados sugerem que a
prática de imagética ajudou o jogador. Limitações do estudo e recomendações
para o uso da imagética são apresentados.
Palavras-chave: Imagética, Voleibol, Saque, Performance,

Motivação
Imágenes mentales para servir mejor

en el Voleibol de Playa: un estudio de
caso
Alberto Filgueiras
Resumen Imágenes mentales es una técnica bien conocida en psicología del

deporte. El objetivo de este estudio fue utilizar los modelos PETTLEP y de
Paivio de imágenes como intervenciones para establecer el ritual, mejorar la
técnica y aumentar la confianza en sí mismo de un atleta de élite de voleibol
de playa. Un estudio de caso fue realizado con un atleta profesional de 25
años de edad. El autor acompañó al atleta durante cuatro meses durante su
práctica de servicio guiándolo a través de ejercicios de imágenes mentales.
Dos entrevistas abiertas y seis cuestionarios fueron considerados por el
método de análisis de contenido. Los resultados sugieren que la práctica de
imágenes mentales ayudó al jugador. Se presentan limitaciones del estudio
y recomendaciones para el uso de las imágenes mentales.
PALABRAS-CLAVE: Imágenes mentales, voleibol, servicio, per-

formance, motivación.
Alberto Filgueiras
Introduction Imagery can be described as the psychological ability of imagining

and mentally reproducing any real situation. Historically, in 1934, Sackett
developed a study to test the hypothesis that symbolic rehearsal enhances
performance in a maze task. Indeed, the results showed significantly better
performance in participants who mentally rehearsed the trajectory in the
maze when compared to control participants (Sackett, 1934).
While it is well known that imagery is capable of improving perfor-
mance on both cognitive and mental tasks (Bihan et al., 1993), it was only
through recent advances in neuroimaging that researchers were able to de-
monstrate the relation between a mental representation of a psychomotor
task and its actual execution (Porro et al., 1996; Stephan et al., 1995). Elite
athletes are known for their ability to control psychomotor movements. The
findings regarding imagery opened a new frontier to understand how athle-
tes could gain performance by mentally rehearsing their movements before
motor execution (Bergmann, Kumpulainen, Avela, & Gruber, 2013; Callow,
Roberts, Hardy, Jiang, & Edwards, 2013; Callow & Waters, 2005; Holmes &
Collins, 2001; Mizuguchi, Nakata, Uchida, &Kanosue, 2012; Moran, Guillot,
MacIntyre, & Collet, 2012; Slimani, Chamari, Boudhiba, &Chéour, 2016;
Wakefield, Smith, Moran, & Holmes, 2013).
Holmes & Collins (2001) suggested that imagery relies on memo-
ries stored in the brain in the form of central representations that are acces-
sed whenever an athlete needs to execute a motor task. This means that,
when the psychologist uses mental rehearsal to train the physical skill of an
athlete, he/she should provide several cognitive and emotional elements to
successfully help the individual to develop a motor imagery. An evidence-
-based guideline was, then, proposed: a 7-factor theoretical model of motor
imagery called PETTLEP, an acronym for the elements of mental images ne-
cessary for a good rehearsal: physical, environment, task, timing, learning,
emotional and perspective (Holmes & Collins, 2001; Wakefield et al., 2013).
The PETTLEP theoretical approach shows good evidence regarding
both functional brain activity in neuroimaging studies (Holmes, Collins,
&Calmels, 2006; Uithol, van Rooij, Bekkering, &Haselager, 2011) and per-
formance enhancement in athletes and non-athletes (Lebon, Collet, &Gui-
llot, 2010; Louis, Collet, &Guillot, 2011). However, Wakefield et al. (2013)
reminds that the PETTLEP was thought to provide a behavioral matching
model, rather than explain brain activation during motor imagery. This
means that it is not expected that mental elements be separately represen-
ted in the brain cortex, which makes difficult to find evidence in neuroima-
ging studies based on the PETTLEP model.
Another issue regarding PETTLEP is its lack of explanation regarding
some of those elements. For example, some EEG evidence found based
on this model were provided by participants observing a motor execution,
which can be considered an external or third person imagery (Holmes et
al., 2006). On the other hand, some imagery exercises seem to be more
effective when the participant imagines himself in the first person—internal
or kinesthetic imagery—, rather than in the third person—external imagery
(Callow et al., 2013). The model also does not provide enough explanation
for the motivational role of imagery on the athlete’s confidence, as found
in the literature (Callow & Waters, 2005). Nonetheless, the PETTLEP model
suggests interesting guidelines that should be followed in order to conduct
good motor imagery.
Alberto Filgueiras
In order to fill the gaps left by the PETTLEP model, another theore-
tical approach combining motor imagery and motivational imagery seems
adequate. Paivio (1985) proposed a hypothetical model to explain imagery,
describing it as the ability to reproduce mentally a task based upon cog-
nitive (e.g., memory and motor skills) and motivational (e.g., arousal and
affect) elements. Paivio’s model provided the foundation to build a psycho-
metric instrument extensively used in sports sciences to assess imagery,
the Sport Imagery Questionnaire (SIQ) (Hall, Rodgers, & Barr, 1990). Ac-
cording to this theoretical approach, imagery can be divided into two diffe-
rent mental aspects and then subdivided in five factors: Cognitive [subdivi-
ded in: cognitive general (CG) that involves mentally rehearsing plans and
strategies; cognitive specific (CS) that involves mental rehearsal of physical
and motor skills] and Motivational [subdivided in: general-arousal (MG-A)
that involves imaging the arousal and anxiety while competing; general-
-mastery (MG-M) used to imagine emotional control and confidence; and
specific (MS) that involves imaging winning, goal achievement and accom-
plishment]. Indeed, factor analyses conducted on the original psychometric
research (Hall, Mack, Paivio, &Hausenblas, 1998) and adaptation studies to
other languages such as Spanish (Ruiz & Watt, 2014), Finnish (Watt, Jaako-
la, & Morris, 2006) and Turkish (Kizildag&Tiryaki, 2012), showed a 5-factor
solution with high reliability for each factor as measured by Cronbach’s al-
pha, ranging from 0.71 to 0.88 (Gregg, Hall, McGowan, & Hall, 2011; Hall
et al., 1998; Kizildag&Tiryaki, 2012; Ruiz & Watt, 2014; Watt et al., 2006).
Several research studies have been conducted under Paivio’s ima-
gery model (Paivio, 1985), with successful results. Evidence in elite athle-
tes show that imagery enable motor performance enhancement after six
1-to-1.5 hour sessions during a 3-week period (Gregg, Hall, &Nederhof,
2005). Regarding motivation, mental rehearsal improved self-efficiency
and self-confidence among high-level Badminton players (Callow, Hardy,
& Hall, 2001). In addition, results from different studies suggest that ima-
gery helps in maintaining motor performance and self-confidence among
athletes throughout the off-season (Cumming & Hall, 2002); and, finally,
motivational imagery seems to help manage competitive anxiety among
roller-skating elite athletes by enhancing self-efficacy (Vadoa, Hall, & Mo-
ritz, 1997). Evidence based on Paivio’s model suggests that imagery use
seems to be related to the athletes’ ability to mentally rehearse in first or
third person, which can partially explain the importance of determining a
kinesthetic or external perspective when producing motor or motivational
imagery (Gregg et al., 2011).
It seems that Holmes and Collins’ PETTLEP theoretical approach and
Paivio’s imagery model tap into different points-of-view of the same pheno-
menon. PETTLEP provides a guideline to imagery practice that is used whe-
never imagery is executed, whereas Paivio’s model suggests sport domains
needed to be controlled by the athlete for good performance. This means
that each one of Paivio’s model domains (i.e., CG, CS, MG-A, MG-M and MS)
(Paivio, 1985) requires imagery conducted with the seven elements of the
PETTLEP model (i.e., physical, environment, task, timing, learning, emotio-
nal and perspective) (Holmes & Collins, 2001). For example, a basketball
player who wants to enhance his free-throw performance (cognitive speci-
fic) should imagine him or herself executing the perfect movement with the
perfect outcome mentally rehearsing: his/hers biomechanics (physical), the
crowd and stadium (environment), the free-throw skill (task), slow motion
and real time movements (timing), the development and improvement of
Alberto Filgueiras
the skill (learning), the emotional arousal entailed with a decisive free-throw
(emotional) and rehearse both in first and third person (perspective).
Among volleyball players, it is known that imagery is used to im-
prove performance of three basic fundamentals: serve, pass and spike.
However, scientific evidence to understand imagery in volleyball is rare.
Results from different studies suggest that imagery helps learning passes
among amateur volleyball players (Johnston, 1971) and enhances motor
performance among high-level players with regard to both passing and ser-
ving (Greboggy, 2012). Electroencephalography studies show that the al-
pha band among high-level athletes while executing visual and kinesthetic
imagery of a volleyball spike tends to remain in higher sub-bands (11-13
Hz) when compared to non-athletes (Stecklow, Infantosi, & Cagy, 2007).
Imagery also seems to help routine establishment and execution of servin-
gs among elite volleyball players (Velentzas, Heinen, &Schack, 2011), im-
prove anxiety management during serving routine (Roure et al., 1998) and
enhance self-efficacy when spiking (Ardehjani, Mokhtari, &Tayyari, 2013).
The present study aims to combine PETTLEP and Paivio’s imagery models
to establish a routine, to improve technique and to boost self-confidence
toward serving of an Elite Beach Volleyball player.
Method
Participant
The participant was a 25-year-old male professional beach volleyball
player. The researcher was invited to work as the sport psychologist of the
participant’s beach volleyball duo through the 2016 Olympic Games clas-
sification. The athlete has been involved with the sport for 10 years and
has been a professional player for the last 7 years. He is an internationally
ranked beach volleyball player with some podiums in the World Tour. The
participant also gave a written consent for publication of the present study
data and its content.
Procedure
The researcher began working with the participant as a sport psy-
chologist. After the three first meetings, the researcher suggested a combi-
nation between the PETTLEP and Paivio’s imagery approaches to establish a
serve routine and enhance psychomotor control and precision. The partici-
pant agreed with the researcher’s proposition, consenting to the study1. The
present study was approved by the author’s institution Ethics Committee.
The imagery protocol consisted in a combination of Paivio’s do-
mains: MG-A, MG-M, MS, CG and CS, with PETTLEP behavioral guidelines.
The focus of the intervention was serving. Eighteen 45-minute sessions
were scheduled during 4 months before the athlete’s first participation in
the 2015 Beach Volleyball World Tour. Session structures varied according
to their objective.
The first sessions consisted in choosing and remembering the best
1
A written consent of the athlete about publication of the data was obtained.
Alberto Filgueiras
serve among those the participant had conducted the previous year. One
serve among thirty, previously video-recorded serves, by the athlete’s coa-
ch during the 2014 Beach Volleyball World Tour and the Brazilian Tour was
selected by the participant as the best serve he had given in a match. The
chosen serve was carefully viewed by the researcher and the participant,
who was then asked to remember its PETTLEP elements: physical sensa-
tions of his biomechanics; crowd, press, opponents and other environment
variables; timing of the serve routine and speed of the execution; the at-
tention focus concentrated on the task (serve) itself and nothing else; the
development until the perfect serve through consciously learning its stren-
gths and limitations; emotional arousal, excitement and anxiety before and
during the serve; and imaging from both perspectives: internal/first person
and external/third person. Serve routine was also discussed and the par-
ticipant was asked to consciously describe the routine he would feel more
comfortable with.
The following 16 sessions consisted the mental training itself. Each
time the participant imagined the serve, he had to do it following these
steps: (1) cognitive specific imagery—the serve itself, including the PETTLEP
elements: biomechanics and sensory-motor information, different environ-
ment, variation of serve timing, focus on the task, the evolution of the lear-
ned skill, emotional arousal and control over anxiety, two times in a row,
first from an internal perspective and then from an external perspective;
(2) cognitive general imagery—serve variation according to strategy: ser-
ves on the line, angle and middle of the court, including the same PETTLEP
elements previously described; (3) motivation general-arousal—emotional
arousal and anxiety by imaging the serve against different opponents; (4)
motivation general-mastery—complete control of emotions focusing on hi-
ghly anxious situations, such as end of matches, opposite crowd chanting
or crowd demanding results; (5) motivation specific—involving a match or
championship winning-serve. During each of the 16 sessions the participant
was guided by the researcher through the imagery by following this order:
CS-PETTLEP (perfect serve), CG-PETTLEP (serve to line, angle and middle),
MG-A-PETTLEP (three most important opponents who bring more emotio-
nal arousal, excitement and/or anxiety), MG-M-PETTLEP (end-of-the-mat-
ch, crowd against, crowd in favor) and MS-PETTLEP (match-winning serve,
championship-winning serve).
The last session involved two parts. During the first part, the par-
ticipant had to consciously describe the imagery protocol followed during
the last 16 sessions. During the last part, the participant had to conduct the
own imaging by himself, asking the researcher for help whenever needed.
He reported to keep doing the imagery protocol during the World Tour wi-
thout a schedule.
The participant was interviewed two times using a semi-structured
interview guide. In each interview, the participant discussed using the PE-
TTLEP-Paivio imagery approach to consolidate serve routine, manage emo-
tional arousal and enhance performance. The first interview took place in
Brazil one week before the beginning of the 2015 Beach Volleyball World
Tour, and the second interview happened one week after the last tourna-
ment of the international season. Each interview took about 45 minutes and
followed the same structure. The interview was recorded using a standard
audio recorder from the researcher’s computer. Probing questions were
asked after each main question in all two interviews (e.g., “Are you able
Alberto Filgueiras
to imagine your perfect serve from a first- and a third-person perspectives

with the same efficiency?”). Also, additional questions were added based on
the data from the questionnaires that warranted further exploration (e.g.,
“How did imaging a winning-serve with the Netherlands crowd in your favor
help you make a number of aces in a row?”).
Additionally, the participant filled 6 open-ended questionnaires with
5 questions each asking about his imagery practice during the 2015 Beach
Volleyball World Tour. The questions were: #1) How often did you use ima-
gery through this tournament? #2) Which mental images did you conduct
while imaging during this tournament? #3) How did you feel about the ima-
ges? #4) How did the images help you? #5) Did you feel anything different
in your serve due to the use of imagery?
Questionnaires were filled every month so information would be
fresh in the participant’s memory. The researcher sent an e-mail to remind
the participant to answer the questionnaires. Data from both interviews and
questionnaires were analyzed.
Data Analysis
Content analysis based on Laurence Bardin’s vision was adopted
(Bardin, 2013; Santos, 2011). This method allows the researcher to fo-
cus on communication looking at themes and categories rather than at the
mere classification of the discussed topics. The main objective of content
analysis is to categorize messages in such a fashion that those reorganized
themes enable the researcher to infer a reality other than what the messa-
ge literally means, in other words: the message beyond the message.
The first step was to transcript the recorded interview. A professio-
nal transcripter was responsible to write the full content of both interviews.
The researcher also read the interviews while playing the recorded audio to
double-check the transcription.
The first phase of the content analysis is a pre-analysis (Santos,
2011). During this phase, the material is gathered and then organized ac-
cording to the type of message. In the present study, 2 semi-structured
interviews transcripts and 6 open-ended questionnaires were the research
corpus (Bardin, 2013). The second step of content analysis is speed reading
the material; in this phase there is only one quick and minimized reading
that allows the researcher to hypothesize the main topics of the research
and to suggest the initial categories that will be used to subsequently orga-
nize the content. The objective of the present study, i.e., establishing serve
routine, technique improvement and self-confidence/motivation were used
as guides to organize the data.
After the second step, the material is codified in systematic units.
According to Bardin (2013), units are themes, sentences or words that
depict one aspect of the message in which the researcher is interested
in. In this phase, words and expressions such as: “ace”, “deep-breathing”
and “routine”; sentences such as “I had a hard time trying to image a
specific opponent at the other side of the court.” and “I always imagine
myself throwing the ball as high as I can, so I can hit the ball at the right
height.”; and themes such as winning a medal and feeling self-confident
were codified in units. The codification process is considered the third step
Alberto Filgueiras
and happens alongside a careful and deep reading of the material (Santos,
2011). The fourth step is named rule establishment and involves counting
a unit and judging whether it is significant or not. A unit can be explicit—a
unit that appears several times in the message, or implicit—the absence
of certain elements can constitute an unit. Therefore, the content analy-
sis considers both what is said and also what is not. In the present study,
some imagery aspects were harder to achieve for the athlete than others.
This means that he reported trying to imagine those aspects in the first two
questionnaires, but then pushed them aside in the last four questionnaires
and the last interview. Bardin (2013) suggests four criteria for considering
a unit significant: (a) frequency of a unit appearance (or disappearance),
(b) intensity of a unit (whenever the unit is followed by adjectives such as:
huge, big, small, tiny, few, among others), (c) the direction of a unit (if it
is positive, neutral or negative), and (d) co-occurrence of two units (whe-
never A happens, B also happens). For example, when the athlete reported
“Applying the serve imagery against a specific opponent helped me a lot
to visualize the victory and to increase my self-confidence.”, the unit was
considered significant because it appeared twice in the player’s reports, it
was intense (which is reflected by the expression “a lot”), it had a positive
sense, since it helped the athlete to boost his self-confidence, and it occur-
red every tournament the athlete was playing against this specific opponent
team, but it did not happen when he was not meant to play against them
in other tournaments.
The fifth and last step of the content analysis is the categorization
of units. Once the significant units are established, the researcher must
create categories to organize those units accordingly (Bardin, 2013). This
is the most important step of the content analysis, because it allows the
researcher to identify the organization of his data and the strength of each
category in the material. The categories, for example, involved herein were:
boosting self-confidence (a theme that repeated several times in the parti-
cipant’s messages) and establishing serve routines (an aspect of the athle-
te’s game that had been built during the World Tour)—which will be further
explored in the results section.
Results
Data from 2 semi-structured interview transcripts and 6 open-en-
ded questionnaires yielded 3 categories, according to Bardin’s (2013) me-
thod of content analysis. The present research aims to understand in what
extent a PETTLEP-Paivio combined imagery intervention would help an elite
Beach-Volleyball athlete to establish a routine, to improve technique and to
motivate/boost self-confidence toward his serve. Based on these objectives,
the data were organized in the following 3 categories: (i) establishing a ser-
ve routine, (ii) improving technique and (iii) boosting self-confidence. These
categories reflect the way and the extent of help that the imagery was able
to provide, respecting the goals of the present study. The themes of the first
category implied: pre-execution of the routine and new steps of assessment
and establishment of the pre-serve; the second category involved: percei-
ved performance enhancement, earned prizes and coach feedbacks, and
the third category accounted for: self-talk, motivation and goal attachment.
Alberto Filgueiras
Establishing a serve routine

Pre-execution routine
The pre-execution routine played a major role in helping the player
establish his own serve routine and minimize motor variability. It can be
defined as the routine before a motor task that helps an athlete to become
prepared to execute it. The player showed some concern about how pre-
-execution changed his motor variability during serve: “I feel that someti-
mes I roll the ball in my hands five times, sometimes I roll it seven times,
and it somehow impacts on my serve.”. Other aspects of his pre-serve routi-
ne were also observed in the first interview, such as eye-fixation and motor
rehearsal:
“My eyes sometimes are fixed at the opponent I want to serve at,
but at other moments I have a hard time fixing them anywhere, so I try to
rehearse my movements by slowly executing them with my hands, but that
takes time and I have only 8 seconds to serve after the referee whistles, so
I also cannot do it every time.”.
Those problems were tapped through imagery intervention and the
athlete reported how imagery helped him manage those aspects in three
different moments. In the final interview, the player indicated that these
problems were not issues anymore, because imagery was now a tool to help
him to choose and modify his own pre-execution routine:
“I use it [imagery] to help me choose the number of rolls I feel
more comfortable in doing during a competition day. Sometimes I cannot
imagine myself rolling the ball at all before the serve, so I simply don’t do it
in the game. It also helped me to establish where to put my eyes on: first I
look at the ball, so I count to 3, and then I look to the line I want to serve
at the opponent’s side. Thus, every day I wake up and it is competition day,
I just imagine myself serving and my pre-serve routine is guided by the one
easiest to imagine.”.
New pre-serve step assessment and establishment

Besides the athlete’s already established serve routine, new steps
could also be introduced to this routine. The player himself wanted to de-
velop a new serve routine, including: deep breathing, visualization of the
throwing height of the ball and stop rolling the ball before serving. He re-
ported the evolution of his pre-serve routine throughout the World Tour. The
first evolution reported was being able to assess new steps of his routine
and whether they helped or not, based on imagery:
“Once I could guide myself through my imagination, I was able to
see whether something helped my performance regarding serving or not...
For example, I wanted to evaluate whether counting would increase my
focus of attention; I imagined myself preparing to serve several times and
counting in different ways. None of my trials felt easy and fluid, so I realized
that counting was not helping and I forgot this idea... From this time on, I
always used it [imagery] to assess whether something that I came up with
would help me or not.”.
It appears clear in the discourse of the player that he would be able
to use imagery to assess other new steps and behaviors associated with his
Alberto Filgueiras
serve routine. Based on this statement, the athlete addressed his issues
one step at a time:
“I feel that the first thing I started to use was deep breathing. We
[the researcher and the athlete] discussed the importance of deep brea-
thing in order to maintain emotional arousal and attention focus before.
Because of our talks, I decided to assess deep breathing instead of rolling
the ball. In the beginning I imagined and felt the sand in my mind, the smell
of sea air in my nose, the crowd around me, everything I wanted to picture
inside my head... After that I was there, standing with the ball in my hand
just holding it and deeply breathing once... twice... and then I threw the
ball the highest I could... It felt right and the image was so clear in my mind
that I had no doubt of using it again and again. I killed two rabbits with just
one axe swing.”.
The Brazilian popular saying “to kill two rabbits with just one axe
swing” means that one action provided the solution to two different pro-
blems. Regarding the athlete’s pre-serve routine, he successfully replaced
one undesired behavior (i.e., to roll the ball) with a desired one (i.e., deep
breathing). He also reported assessing deep breathing efficiency in diffe-
rent moments during the World Tour: “Sometimes I had some doubts about
using deep breathing before a serve, but then I imagined it and it felt so
fluid that I kept doing it nonetheless.”.
The height of the throw during serve was an important step the
player wanted to establish. To decrease motor variability and consequently
throw the ball the same way, the athlete adopted imagery as a tool to visua-
lize the same throwing height before the serve and, consequently, executed
the serve with the same movements.
“I had a hard time throwing the ball at the same height every ser-
ve; probably because my routine varied and my execution varied to the
same extent... To establish a routine that could help me to throw the ball
always at the same height, I imagined myself throwing it during different
moments. I began the World Tour imaging the throw before the serve routi-
ne. It did not work out. After three tournaments I felt I had to use imagery
as a step of the serve routine. It worked out... I felt that my performance
improved and I no longer worried that much about the throw height, I just
imagined it and then executed it the way I imagined.”.
Improving technique
Perceived performance enhancement
The most recurrent unit that appeared in the athlete’s discourse
was performance enhancement. In every questionnaire he stated that his
serve performance had no limit: “... it is amazing how it [imagery] works
well for me: I keep improving my serve and I cannot see any limits to how
far I can go.”. There were three basic improvement aspects reported by
the athlete: precision, motor control and strength. Regarding precision, the
player perceived decreases in variation:
“I feel that it [imagery] somehow improves my performance becau-
se it allows me to think about my own technique and correct myself without
anyone’s help... You see, when I use it [imagery] I try to imagine the best
Alberto Filgueiras
serve I could do, so I always imagine my ball touching the backcourt line of
my opponents. The serve in the middle of the court is very hard to pass, so
I try to imagine this one more than the others... In fact, I imagined myself
doing this same serve so many times that I started to feel that I was always
executing the same thing I imagined and vice-versa.”.
As can be seen, the athlete opted to imagine one kind of serve.
Apparently, his decision was planned, involving a game strategy that could
be generalized to different opponents. It helped him to improve his serve,
to be conscious of his technique and to even correct himself. The other im-
portant aspect of his serve improvement was motor control:
“I tried to imagine myself completely controlling my body. I felt my
muscles, my position, my posture, everything around me... Once I had a
picture of my own body in my mind, I could easier transit between a first
person perspective and a third person perspective... It [imagery] provided
me with the opportunity to think about my motor performance and how it
would affect my serve. I was then able not only to think about my body, but
to see my own motor performance through mental images and to correct
myself whenever I wanted. In fact, after watching some match videos, I
realized that I was imaging myself the exact same way I watched on the
video.”.
One important factor of the player’s discourse was the transition
between an internal and external perspective. His statement highlights the
importance of both points-of-view regarding motor control. The athlete’s
strength appeared four times in his discourse. Interestingly, it was depicted
apart from other performance aspects:
“One of the most important things I wanted to improve was my
strength. My serve is based on strength and I tried to improve it at the
gym without much success; it appears that my development reached some
kind of plateau... Using it [imagery] allowed me to realized that more than
strength, I had to move my arm the fast as I could, so speed could lead to
a faster ball and a stronger serve.”.
Earned prizes
The player reported each time he earned a prize for his serve.
Among the three reports of prizes he earned, imagery had a pivotal role in
two of them according to the athlete:
“I played in the World Tour other four years, but this was the first
time I had a consistent and precise serve... My performance probably im-
proved due to mental practice. I won the World Cup best server and the
World Tour best server prizes and it happened because I practiced a lot
physically, but most importantly, I practiced it mentally.”.
This last discourse was during the second interview, when the athle-
te had already won all the titles of the year. Regardless, when he earned
his first prize at the Brazilian Tour, he already depicted the importance of
imagery on his performance: “When I got the trophy in my hands I remem-
bered how hard I had practiced my serve mentally. It somehow led to the
prize.”.
Alberto Filgueiras
Coach’s feedbacks
The coach’s opinion and feedbacks were very important to enhan-
ce performance. They also allowed the athlete to practice more vivid and
intense imagery which enabled the correction of motor execution through
mental images. According to the athlete, the technical feedbacks of the coa-
ch helped to picture himself executing the serve in the right way:
“Every time my coach talked to me about my serve I tried to ima-
gine how I could make it right. In the beginning it was a hard thing to do,
but at some point during the World Tour I could just hear his opinions and
I already saw myself doing it correctly. He talked in a fashion that made it
[imagery] easy to practice [mentally].”.
Boosting self-confidence
Self-talk
The athlete reported imagery as a tool to improve self-confidence
and build self-efficiency towards his serve. One of the most cited aspects of
this development was self-talk. In fact, he reported talking to himself seve-
ral times during matches, addressing the mental practice to build stronger
self-confidence:
“Sometimes when I was going through a hard time in a match, I
remembered how well I served during mental practice, so I talked to my-
self: ‘Man, you can serve better than that. Just remember the best serve
you imagined and do it.’. That helped me to get into the right mindset and
serve better.”.
Self-talk was also a tool used during imagery. The player sugges-
ted twice that, while he was mentally practicing his serve, he also talked to
himself in the same way he would use self-talk in a match:
“I had to practice everything, right? So, I did... I imagined myself
talking to me as if I was going through difficulties with my serve: ‘Throw the
ball high and hit it as fast as you can.’, ‘Ball on the line, you can do it.’, the-
se thoughts helped me to achieve the right mindset and to serve the best
I could... It [imagery] actually helped me sometimes when I was having a
bad serve tournament; I was able to turn the tables.”
It is also important to note that imagery helped the athlete to achie-
ve the right mindset through self-talk. He reported once that he tried dif-
ferent self-talk contents and choose among the ones that worked for him:
“I tried to imagine a few different self-talks, but I kept three of them that
worked the best for me.”.
Motivation
Motivation is an ample definition in Sport Psychology, and is com-
posed of several constructs. Under the label of motivation: resilience, emo-
tional arousal when serving, positive thoughts and the will to do more and
more were put together. One of the first things the athlete talked about
regarding motivation was how it helped him become more resilient towards
mistakes:
Alberto Filgueiras
“While doing it [imagery], I became aware of the fact that I could

correct my mistakes just by imaging the right way to execute my serve...
Despite making mistakes in both practices and games, I was not influenced
by them because I knew I could always re-imagine the way I was doing my
fundamentals.”.
Indeed, the will to serve better became something to pursuit. The
athlete reported in five of the eight sources of data of the present study that
imagery provided him with pleasure and positive thoughts about his serve:
“It does not matter if I am at practice or in an important tourna-
ment, it does no matter whether I am in a good or a bad mood, to serve
gives me pleasure, I am happy about my serve and I believe myself when
I am serving... I always have good thoughts when I serve, regardless of
the final result, even when I am having an awful tournament, I always
think that my serve will help me win, I do not have doubts about my serve
anymore... I built this confidence, this positive attitude towards serving by
repeatedly imaging my best serve.”.
The results also suggest that imagery helped the athlete to practi-
ce better. He reported a better attitude towards training his serve. In fact,
using imagery allowed him to introduce mental practice within physical and
technical practices, enabling the consciousness of motor control and correc-
tion of his biomechanics:
“At some point I started using it [imagery] during practice... I felt I
could practice for hours in a row because I already did that in my own mind
the whole week. It helped me to become aware of my movements, of my
body, and to correct myself whenever I wanted to, because I could see my-
self doing each serve from outside my body and to control my movements
in my mind; then I had only to transfer from my mind to my body.”.
Another important aspect of how imagery would enable the athlete
to boost his motivation was building serve-plans against specific opponen-
ts. Every sport has a group of players that are the ones everyone wants to
beat; beach volleyball is not any different. Those opponents demanded bet-
ter tactics. The player reported twice that he used imagery to build a serve
strategy that could help him against specific opponents:
“Every time we knew we would play against Netherlands and Spain,
I took at least thirty minutes before the match to imagine myself serving in
their lines. It helped me to see myself winning them, I felt more confident
after creating this mental image and motivated to win.”.
Goal Attachment
It is common among professional players to establish season goals.
Among the goals, to become a better server and to use the serve as a tool
to win games were established for the athlete in the present study. These
goals demanded both physical and mental practices, and he had to make
a number of serves and aces during tournaments to achieve what his staff
had planned. According to him, imagery provided the opportunity to de-
velop resilience and made him mentally stronger to take the pressure in
exchange for results:
Alberto Filgueiras
“Once, in the beginning of the mental practice, I visualized myself

receiving the best server prize of the World Cup. It was a clear picture in my
head, so clear that I could remember as if it had really happened... Whe-
never I was making lots of mistakes during practice, or when I could not
achieve the number of aces in a tournament, I went back in my mind and
I saw myself receiving that award again. That memory I created inside my
head made me pursue the goals we established without any doubts that I
would fulfill them.”.
Perhaps the athlete overstated he had no doubts. Regardless, his
reports provided evidence that imagery helped keeping him motivated to
pursuit and achieve the goals established toward his serve.
Discussion Results from the content analysis provided a good picture of the
qualitative dataset gathered from both the interviews and the questionnai-
res. The underlying discourse revealed aspects that were not explicitly said
(Bardin, 2013; Santos, 2011), but were, nonetheless, pivotal to understand
how imagery helps an elite athlete to improve psychological and motor as-
pects of his serve in Beach Volleyball.
The first result was that imagery enabled the athlete to establish
a serve routine from a pre-execution to the serve itself. Evidence in the
scientific literature shows that mental rehearsal of a motor task improves
precision and accuracy (Bergmann et al., 2013; Gregg et al., 2005). The
role of the pre-execution routine regarding these aspects seems rather im-
portant, because athletes with the same pre-task routine tend to show less
motor variability when executing the task itself (Mesagno&Mullane-grant,
2010) and it also seems to apply to indoor volleyball serves (Velentzas et
al., 2011). In the present study, the novel findings are the ability of the
player to develop his own pre-serve routine based on how different gestures
and behaviors feel during his mental rehearsal. It means that imagery also
allows the athlete to insert or create new serve routines without the need
to physically test the serve, as only to rehearse and see what feels better
seems to be effective.
Another point that should be noted in the athlete’s pre-serve routine
was the deep breathing adopted. The literature shows that deep breathing
is a physiological technique that allows individuals to regulate autonomic
nervous system activation, thus reducing stress and anxiety (Paul, Elam,
Verhulst, Elam, &Verhulst, 2007). Golf players use it massively during their
pre-shot routines and report improvement of self-efficacy, attentional focus
and stress management (Yancey, Czech, Joyner, Zwald, &Gentne, 2011).
Among Beach Volleyball players, there is no evidence in the literature re-
garding the benefits of deep breathing on pre-serve routines. The present
study sheds some light on how it works for elite athletes. The participant
player in the present study used mental rehearsal to assess the benefits of
deep breathing and stated that it helped him imagine a clearer image of his
serve routines. Indeed, imagery allows individuals to feel emotions related
to imaging events (Roure et al., 1998; Vadoa et al., 1997), which means
that what the player did in the present study does not only makes sense,
but it can also be used as a strategy among sport psychologists to practice
anxious situations by combining deep breathing and imagery.
Alberto Filgueiras
Regarding performance, the present study did not assess this varia-
ble directly. Regardless, the athlete gave good indexes suggesting that his
performance did indeed evolve partially due to imagery. The athlete him-
self reported improvements to his serve because mental rehearsal allowed
motor control and proprioception consciousness, which could indirectly in-
fluence his performance. Indeed, there is evidence suggesting that imagery
enables those psychological domains to be evaluated by the athletes them-
selves (Bergmann et al., 2013; Callow et al., 2013; Kizildag&Tiryaki, 2012).
The consequence of this ability is to correct wrong movements and to as-
sess whether a motor skill is in fact controlled by the player or not. Athletes
who create easy and fluid mental images of a motor task are probably doing
the task correctly, whereas hard-to-make-out or blurry imagery indicates a
wrong technique or an incongruence between what is right and the mistakes
made by the athlete (Mizuguchi et al., 2012; Porro et al., 1996; Wakefield et
al., 2013). However, being able to build fluid and clear mental images does
not imply in enhancement of motor or sports performance. In fact, there
are several variables that can influence the estimates of an individual’s own
performance. For example, unskilled people or individuals who are unaware
of what it means to be good at a skill fail to estimate their own performance
in cognitive tasks (Krueger & Mueller, 2002). On the other hand, people who
show chronic self-views—both high and low self-efficacy—fail to estimate
their own performance on career-paths (Ehrlinger& Dunning, 2003). This
means that, in order to accept the athlete’s estimate and assessment of his
own performance, he/she has to be sure that he/she presents a balanced
self-view and is both skilled and aware of his/her limits regarding his ser-
ve. This does not seem to be the case, since other sources, such as earned
prizes and coach’s feedbacks were also present in the player’s discourse.
The athlete earned three major prizes during the season: best ser-
ver at the Brazilian Tour, best server at the World Cup and best server at
the World Tour. He had never achieved any of those prizes before. This
apparently means that imagery helped him, at least in part. In the present
research other important variables existed, such as hours of practice, serve
accuracy, and in-game statistics, thus it is not possible to infer the actual
impact of imagery on the enhancement of the athlete’s serve performance.
The last source of information the athlete provided was his coach’s feedba-
cks. Indeed, it seems that the coach actually felt improvement, partially
due to mental rehearsal. Altogether, although it is not possible to state this
for certain, this evidence seems to suggest that imagery partially helped the
athlete to serve better this year compared to previous years.
Finally, the last psychological domain that imagery tapped into
was self-confidence. The results basically replicate some of the literatu-
re findings, but also bring new contributions to applied sport psychology
(Van Raalte, Vincent, & Brewer, 2016). The benefits of self-talk are well-k-
nown among sport psychologists, since it helps regulate emotional arousal
(Kross et al., 2014), manage stress and anxiety (Wei, Cummings, Villabø,
& Kendall, 2014), improve motor control (Chang et al., 2014), enhance
motivation (Blanchfield, Hardy, De Moree, Staiano, &Marcora, 2014), and
increase endurance of the flow state-of-mind in expert athletes (Jackson,
1995). However, the sport-science literature lacks studies that show the re-
lationship between imagery and self-talk. Nevertheless, the combination of
these techniques has been explored before, and, when combined, there is
evidence suggesting that athletes improve their performance (Neck &Manz,
1992) and develop goal attachment (Zourbanos, Papaioannou, Argyropou-
Alberto Filgueiras
lou, &Hatzigeorgiadis, 2014). It is also possible that self-talk facilitates ima-

gery (Cumming, Nordin-Bates, Horton, & Reynolds, 2006). In the present
study, however, the athlete reported a new way to use imagery: according
to the results, imagery was the foundation of positive thoughts regarding
his serve skills. Even though the literature suggests a facilitation of imagery
through self-talk, the relationship between those two domains seems dee-
per than facilitation, and the results of the present research suggest that
athletes who create good and clear mental images can use them to build a
positive and more efficient self-talk.
Regarding motivation, results showed that the athlete was able to
build up stronger self-confidence by believing that he could do the things he
imagined before. Likewise, he built a better self-efficacy and strengthened
his attitudes towards himself. This is a well explored aspect of imagery, as
research conducted with badminton players (Callow et al., 2001), slalom
skiers (Callow et al., 2013), horse jockeys (Callow & Waters, 2005), in-
door volleyball players (Ardehjani et al., 2013) and other sports (Hall et al.,
1990) present evidence that imagery allows the athlete to think of himself
as doing something that he had difficulty in doing before, which then ena-
bles him to create a stronger attitude towards himself in his own mind. This
self-image allows him to believe in himself and consequently generate mo-
tivation to achieve something that was or was not achieved before (Gregg
et al., 2005). It seems that this is also the reason athletes overall, and the
athlete in the present study specifically, keep themselves attached to an
established goal: if they can do it in their minds, then they are able to do it
physically (Zourbanos et al., 2014).
In conclusion, the present study provides evidence that a combined
imagery intervention based on both Paivio’s (1985) and PETTLEP (Holmes
& Collins, 2001) theoretical models is possible and helps the athlete to be-
come more self-confident, improve his performance with regard to serving
skills and establish a better pre-execution routine. The results also depict
some new findings that deserve further investigation in future studies: (a)
that imagery allows athletes to assess whether a behavior works during his/
her pre-shot routine or not, and (b) somehow imagery provides the resour-
ces to develop positive and more efficient self-talk. The main limitations,
however, rely on the nature of the present study: a qualitative single-case
study is hard to generalize, but perhaps it can shed some light into future
research regarding imagery applied to sport psychology.
Alberto Filgueiras
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Imagery for the

Abstract Imagery is a widely spread technique in sport

KEYWORDS: Imagery, Volleyball, Serving, Performance,

Imagética para melhora no saque no

Resumo Imagética é uma técnica bem conhecida na Psicologia do Esporte.

Palavras-chave: Imagética, Voleibol, Saque, Performance,

Imágenes mentales para servir mejor

Resumen Imágenes mentales es una técnica bien conocida en psicología del

PALABRAS-CLAVE: Imágenes mentales, voleibol, servicio, per-

Introduction Imagery can be described as the psychological ability of imagining

to imagine your perfect serve from a first- and a third-person perspectives

Establishing a serve routine

New pre-serve step assessment and establishment

“While doing it [imagery], I became aware of the fact that I could

“Once, in the beginning of the mental practice, I visualized myself

lou, &Hatzigeorgiadis, 2014). It is also possible that self-talk facilitates ima-

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